This and Global Warming alone are enough to keep me voting Democrat for years and years to come.

Abortion's all the Rs need for the same loyalty from a big chunk of the population. They end up voting for all kinds of other stuff incidentally, just because the Rs are—thanks to some serious errors in our system of government that aren't likely to be fixed any time soon—the only viable pro-life party. So those voters will keep opposing action on climate change and voting anti-net-neutrality, simply as a side-effect.

[EDIT] wrote "pro-net-neutrality" rather than "anti" by mistake; fixed.

It's a shame that there is so much Money involved in each of those topics.

Plus jesus and gays. The second the Republicans produce an intellectual candidate the country will change profoundly. I feel the exact same way as you.

Meanwhile abortion and second amendment enforcement are enough to keep me voting Republican for years and years to come (and the occasional Libertarian).

The interesting thing is, fewer abortions happen under Democrat presidents than under Republican presidents. Something about pushing sex education and birth control that reduces abortions.

I don't exactly understand why you would vote Republican if you did not like abortions.

Typically, they want them to be illegal because they consider them morally close or identical to murder. One might not vote for the legalize-murder party just because the stats say fewer murder happen when they're in power, preferring to vote for make-murder-illegal party that'll try to outlaw it entirely.

That my fellow Dems so often paint this position as plainly stupid or obviously wrong is a frequent source of frustration for me, and why I usually just avoid engaging in discussion of the topic (whoops). Not accusing you of having done that, mind you, I just see it a lot.

Fair point.

Snopes rates "Abortion rates drop during Democratic presidencies and rise during Republican administrations" as false. [1]

And even if it were true (and it's not), the national legislatures is often the opposite party as the executive, and they're the ones that actually make the laws. (The real reality though is that the states are far more relevant in this area.)

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/abortion-rates-presidencie...

Different fact check than what I'm saying. They don't rise during Republican presidencies. They do fall at a slower rate.

Well, if we're being precise, your original assertion was something different altogether.

You claimed "fewer abortions happen under Democrat presidents than under Republican presidents", but that's still not really true. Two of the top four years for abortions per live birth (1979, 1980, 1981, 1984) had a Democratic administration. Three if you look at the previous year's President. [1]

[1] According to CDC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_Uni...

> The interesting thing is, fewer abortions happen under Democrat presidents than under Republican presidents.

I think you've confused abortions with deficits, in terms of things Republicans rhetorically oppose but in practice increase while in office.

Don't you feel guilty about global warming denial?

> majority of public

Do you have sources? I personally believe in the free market, and think fast lanes are beneficial for customers.

It's pretty easy to find sources on this, although I'm sure that you can find conservative media sources that would support a contrary opinion (as is the case for most things). Maybe try using DuckDuckGo to ensure that you're not stuck in a bubble: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=net+neutrality+poll

One of the more compelling sources that I've seen is an analysis of the comments that the FCC received, which showed that 66% of verifiably legitimate comments favored Net Neutrality. See: https://medium.com/ragtag-notes/bot-or-not-verifying-public-...

Thanks for the reply, and I suppose you're right. In my review of the public understanding of this topic, they don't seem to understand or even realize the potential benefits from the free market approach.

One thing I am curious about is why "fast lane" traffic is sold for so inexpensive a price to favored companies. Prices that are a lot less than a typical consumer could pay for extra transfer.

Because Republicans have given up all pretenses of governing based on the will of the people and now openly strive to protect their own power and wealth forever at all costs.

And you say that as if the Democrats are concerned about the will of the people. The problem is that Congress, in general, is bought and paid for by their favorite special interests and no one in congress really cares about what the people think.

Democrats have a long track record of trying to get money out of politics. A constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and establish public funding of election campaigns has been on the platform since 2014, and it was one of Hillary Clinton's chief campaign promises.

For Republicans, it is just the opposite: they voted unanimously against an amendment proposal to overturn citizens united (all Democrats in favor)[1], unanimously against a bill requiring fincial disclosures of campaign finance (all Democrats in favor)[2], twice[3], against a ban on dark money campaign ads[4], unanimously in favor of a repeal of the existing pittance of public campaign money (all Democrats against)[5], and against a bill to require auditable paper trails of elections (all Democrats in favor)[6]

Money in politics is absolutely NOT a "both sides" issue.

1. https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/49906

2. https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/32154

3. https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/41152

4. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll034.xml

5. https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/37426

6. https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/21011

Let's take a look at Democrat vs Republican fund raising:

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/

The fact that PAC money is needed to win elections doesn't mean that everyone supports PAC money. There are multiple PACs whose stated goals are to abolish PACs.

Look at the votes. Republicans vote to defend money in politics, Democrats vote to abolish it. The pattern has been very consistent for over a decade.

Meanwhile, Republicans typically prefer term limits instead, and are typically opposed by Democrats. [1] [2]

TBH it amazes me that Congress has as much power as they do over campaign finance. Ads, etc. are form of political speech. And restricting political speech is nigh unto violating the 1st Amendment.

[1] https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/report/national-...

[2] https://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/208395-senate-...

Well term limits are a genuinely bad idea. They make sense for the President, because the Presidency is a uniquely powerful office, and a perpetual president is a real threat to democracy.

A perpetual representative, who wields 1/535th of America's executive power is not going to cause much harm, certainly not enough to justify overriding the will of the people who would keep them in office if they could.

Consider also, term limits would speed up the revolving door between lobbyists and congress, by forcing people out before they're ready to leave, and replacing them with legislators who are less experienced and easier to manipulate.

When some people in Congress have been there for over 40 years, term limits certainly do sound reasonable.

> easier to manipulate

If they weren't always re-campaigning, they might be less easy to manipulate.

If they weren't always re-campaigning, they would not be accountable to the people for their actions, and during their statutory final term they would be actively seeking an employment guarantee from somebody once they're out, and that employer will have leverage over them during that two year term.

  it was one of Hillary Clinton's chief campaign promises

And one impossible for any President to fulfill, so it was inherently dishonest. The President has no authority in amending the Constitution and does not even participate in the process.

You can be supported all you like by special interest groups. If people don't vote for you, you're ejected from office. So at some point, they have to keep up the appearance of standing for the people.

The only time they "appear" to care is when they are campaigning and saying all the right things you want to hear. But on return to Congress, it is just business as usual.

Politicians overwhelmingly tend to keep their promises[1]. Democrats have tried many times to get money out of politics, but they were obstructed by Republicans (who have never promised such) on every attempt.

1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trust-us-politicians-ke...

The article you're commenting about would suggest otherwise.

Republicans can only remain in power if people continue to vote them into office... so there has to be some pretense or the will of the people will cease to support them.

Any party is only as effective as the numbers of people they have in office.

- Not if they can cling to power through gerrymandering: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/29/us/politics/n...

- Not if they can strip the powers of positions that they have lost: https://www.apnews.com/62c976c13a574fa7a8cbb2aa4de425da

- Not if they have a propaganda media outlet that misinforms voters: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-...

The cronysm and party-before-country behavior of the republican party is a threat to the democracy of the nation.

Do you genuinely believe these things explain >1% of Republican electoral success? If so, can you explain your thinking?

North Carolina is gerrymandered so that Republicans reliably win 77% of the seats despite getting only 49% of the votes, that's 2% of the House of Representatives right there.

The House of Representatives is currently in Democratic hands, so the system there would appear to be working as intended.

Meanwhile, the Senate and the Presidency are controlled by Republicans, and gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to those outcomes.

> gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to those outcomes.

You're correct that at the first order gerrymandering is irrelevant to the Senate and Presidency. Gerrymandering comes into play as a second-order effect, though; when used at the state level, it can cause state legislatures to effectively lock to a party. These state legislatures can then make changes to the way voting is organized in their state, enfranchising and disenfranchising voters in ways that support their party, and funding/defunding polling districts per the same. This has an effect that can be plenty large enough to swing statewide elections: see the last election's shenanigans in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida if you're in doubt.

I cannot overstate my doubts enough. Can you point me to evidence (aside from Stacey Abrams' sour grapes) that this swung an election?

The Democrats won the largest popular vote margin of any party in American history in 2018, but only the 53rd largest congressional majority in history, mostly because of Democratic voters in North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin who were "packed and cracked" so that their votes counted far less.

Suppose they had in fact won the largest House majority in history. What exactly would it change? How would NN be faring right now? Moral grandstanding aside, I don't see the relevance of any of this.

The relevance to this is that you asserted that Republicans haven't given themselves any electoral advantage at all or that, if they did, it accounted for less than 1% of their success, when that cannot be further from the truth.

You said "explain your reasoning", and that's what I did.

No need to get defensive over it and try to pretend like it's irrelevant to the discussion. This is literally the discussion you explicitly asked for. If you don't like the fact that the Republican party has acted in a decades-long effort to guarantee their own power in perpetuity with or without public support, don't get mad at me, get mad at them.

I’m not mad at anyone, you simply haven’t explained anything. You just keep repeating the standard litany of Republican sins.

I never disputed Republicans’ attempt to give themselves an electoral advantage. I just disagree that this is consequential, much less decisive. As you yourself argued elsewhere in the thread, NC Republicans’ chicanery could mean a 2% swing in the House. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re telling me that by attributing 100% of R success to trickery, in a state that’s the worst of the worst in this regard and so yields the biggest effect size, you can create a counterfactual where Democrats have 2% more seats in just one half of Congress?

Your smoking gun is a rounding error. So I’m asking again: how do these sorts of numbers lead you to believe what you apparently believe?

Gerrymandering is utterly irrelevant to the Senate and the Presidency... in the sense that, if you lift the restriction for representative districts to have comparable populations, the resulting distortions of the popular will no longer count as mere "gerrymandering".

You asked how "these things explain >1% of Republican electoral success", but have now moved the goalposts to "It's still not enough to control the entire house".

I'm really not trying to move the goalposts. It just seems weird to use the House to argue about the incredible effectiveness of the Republican's underhanded tactics--when they don't even control the one body where those tactics should help!

In any event, the House sits beside the Senate and the Executive. As another commenter pointed out, this case at best explains ~2% of the dynamics of one out of three legislative bodies offices. And sure, other states might contribute a bit more. Fine, maybe it clears my 1% threshold; but just barely.

You did though, and when faced with the evidence you shifted the burden of proof to maintain your opinion that gerrymandering by Republicans isn't a problem. The fact you continue to minimize it and ignore the other problematic Republican behavior shows confirmation bias.

You're unnecessarily fixated on the 1% threshold I set out earlier. While nothing you said has changed my mind (my estimate is still <1%), I'm not really interested in the exact number. My point is that your concerns are qualitatively irrelevant (practically, not morally). So what if, in the absence of gerrymandering, there would be 100 fewer Republican congressmen? The Senate still isn't passing NN, and Trump is still stacking the judiciary with conservatives.

I'm not here to defend Republicans (I think they're pretty bad) or the practices you described (I also think those are bad). But that doesn't change the fact that gerrymandering and power grabs and Fox News are nearly completely inconsequential in explaining the world in front of us. Quit with the liberal wishcasting. People don't vote Republican because they've been misled by some sinister conspiracy. They just don't want what you're selling.

The articles I listed do a good job of explaining that, especially the NYT one and how they cling to control in states they lose votes in. It's much more than the 1% or 2% which you keep repeating to minimize it.

Your article explains the House of Representatives makeup in what the NYT concedes is the single most gerrymandered state in the country. Should we really be generalizing from that?

Regardless. The biggest obstacle to NN is currently the Senate and the Presidency. Two out of your three points are completely irrelevant to those offices. Is it all just Fox News? The Russians?

Dude, you're just hand-waving at this point. Add up all the gerrymandering you want. Maybe it gets you to 2%. Maybe 5%. Heck, let's say it accounts for 100% of Republican House members!

Wave your wand and make it disappear. The House is now... still Democratic. And the Senate is now... oh dang, still Republican! And the Trumpenfuhrer... still there!

Sounds to me like your electoral boogeymen don't have that much explanatory power.

> Republicans can only remain in power if people continue to vote them into office

That's not true. People voted them out in 2016 but their votes were not counted, or their registrations were falsely and illegally cancelled, etc. There is a lot more at play here than people's choices; and given that people's ability to choose with correct information and free will has been significantly hampered by Republican-led efforts to reduce the quantity of real factual information in the hands of voters, replaced with lies designed to steal votes.

Now I know that Donald Trump lies a lot, like a lot but sometimes he tells the truth. He has stated at least 5 times that neither he nor his supporters would accept any election results where he did not win.

The current President threatens the nation regularly with his active plans to cancel the next elections and stay in power.

Be careful assuming that the popularity of politicians or their party has anything at all to do with them being in power. It doesn't.

Um... isn't the constitution designed to prevent shit like this happening?

I have no special interest in American politics as I just watch from the other side of the border, but I'm pretty sure my understanding of the political system down there is full enough that I'm right in saying that a sitting president can't legally follow through on threats like that without getting evicted from office.

Aren't there failsafes and backup plans and laws and a justice department to prevent presidential overreach?

This is the whole purpose of the three branches of government.

Just because the constitution was intended to have certain properties, doesn't mean that it actually does.

For example, the chief architects of the Constitution, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, tried several times to eliminate the Electoral College with amendments once they saw how it behaved. They wrote extensively about how their intention had been subverted and the language they chose was a mistake, but other politicians rebuffed their efforts to fix the mistake, and decided instead to exploit it: presidential candidates can ignore most of the voters.

Paraphrasing a certain mustachioed totalitarian, how many federal agents does the Constitution command? Is the Constitution going to personally storm the White House? Even if it did, what would happen if there were resistance at the other end?

Because Republicans are too popular on other issues to swing the Senate.

Agreed, but "too popular" within certain geographies, which the structure of the senate favors. If I recall, at least by the numbers a majority in the Senate can be elected by something less than 20% of the US population.